A few nights ago I was playing in a Pinball Arcade tournament, on Space Shuttle (one of the 8 featured). This happened:

After finishing the game, I checked on the rules in-game and it only mentions that I can get 20,000 upon completion of the bank of drops. BUT it gave me 50,000 instead and a flasher sequence to pinpoint this. I also looked up the rules on the web but to no avail. I may have discovered a new rule in Space Shuttle that involves a Sweeping Bonus that was later implemented in games like Whirlwind.

This has me thinking: Are there any other games that have some hidden, undiscovered rules that might be interesting to find?

It doesn’t look to me like you get 50k. You start at 96 and jump to 25 which is like 29k and you have a ball in the pops and you go through the spinner. The flashing award was your center ramp collect.

No, that’s not what I’m referring to. It’s before the ramp – the score was at 3.96 million, then right after the drop completion, the score read 4.01 million. The bit I’m referring to happens very fast; about 0 to 1 second into the clip. A special sound sequence plays before the standard Drop completion sound occurs.

I thought the sweep bonus on space shuttle was common knowledge - I know I knew about it when SpShuttle came out and later on as well when I owned one. Barry Oursler mentioned it in a pinball profile as well. Doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere else though so I guess I learned it just from observation/playing.

until Stern puts games or the door coded, I won’t believe it. And since this is a lot of a pre designed rethemed archer. They had a head start.

So the game isn’t even “out the door” yet, and it looked to be fully (or nearly fully) coded. Based on your conditions, you should start believing.

The playfield was designed, and sure, @sk8ball had a lot of rules ideas in his head (or carried over from Archer) that he saw through to fruition on Maiden, but you’re overlooking that all those rules and any code elements from Archer had to be completely re-coded on Maiden. Go listen to KME’s interview on Coast2Coast podcast.

Further, from both that interview, the stream, and @Smack847’s interview on Head 2Head, there are already cool nuances coded in. Here’s a mere two of them: a Shatz award for alley passing up into a target on the left side of the playfield, and a left Loop value that changes whether you use the crutch of holding up the upper left flipper to make the shot wider. Both awesome cool extras. Both already coded in.

Exactly, it’s not out the door yet, when it is, and it’s fully coded, I’ll believe it. Until then, I have no faith in Stern. If this game is coded on release, the next one, and every one after they better be too. Post release updates should be nothing more than fixes and tweaks. A game should be fully playable the day it’s delivered.

I’ve been pretty disillusioned with Stern for a couple years… they haven’t released a game I considered buy-worthy since TWD, but I am starting to get excited for this one, if only because of KME.

I do hope Stern releases schematics and repair information for Spike, as that is the primary thing holding me back from considering buying a Maiden, assuming the code is good. Who is the programmer? I did not get a chance to see the stream.